The mayor of Amsterdam has resigned. The last eight months he led the city with a diagnosis of “lung cancer in the terminal stage”
Mayor of Amsterdam Eberhard van der Laan on September 18, resigned. He’s got back in January was diagnosed with lung cancer which cannot be cured, but he continued to govern the city.
Eberhard van der Laan is one of the most popular mayors in the history of Amsterdam; his first interview after the announcement of diagnosis was seen almost a million people-more than the entire population of the capital of the Netherlands, excluding suburbs.
Lawyer and politician Eberhard van der Laan became mayor of Amsterdam in 2010 after his predecessor job Cohen decided to lead the Dutch labor Party. Kohen in the capital of the Netherlands are not very fond of the softness. In particular, he was constantly recalled the phrase “take tea with their parents,” so he offered to resolve the conflicts of residents with young Moroccans. Van der Laana, by contrast, could be called an opponent of multiculturalism, he is also the post of Minister for integration (the Ministry he led in 2008) paid attention that the uncontrolled dissemination and the preservation of cultural diversity leads to the fact that the disadvantaged are themselves Dutch.
Mayor of Amsterdam van der Laan tried to keep the spirit of the freedom of the city, even against their own beliefs.
So, he admitted that he had not happy about marijuana, but still did not respond to calls to ban its sale to tourists. If you take such a decision, said van der Laan, foreigners will still look for drugs, and this just causes the increase in crime and illegal drug trafficking.
Another well-known initiative of van der Laana — brothel run by women working in the sex industry, it opened in may 2017. It was assumed that he would rid the sex industry of exploitation of women, what has not been done through the legalization of prostitution in Amsterdam in 2000. City hall participated in the search for the brothel and all organizational issues, but after running the project completely eliminated and left to the prostitutes the right to decide how much to work, how to take the rent for the workplace (the so-called “window”), and how to deal with many other issues that were previously left to the discretion of the pimps and brothel owners. How successful is an experiment, it is unclear: the results will be summarized in a few years.
In January 2017, it became known that the van der Laana lung cancer with metastases all over the body with almost no chances of recovery.
The politician told the citizens and promised to perform their duties as long as they force.